A LETTER WITH A POSTSCRIPT
“A gentleman called to see you
when you were out last night, sir,” said Mrs.
Medley, my landlady, removing the last of the breakfast
things.
“Yes?” I said, in my affable way.
“A gentleman,” said Mrs.
Medley meditatively, “with a very powerful voice.”
“Caruso?”
“Sir?”
“I said, did he leave a name?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge.”
“Oh, my sainted aunt!”
“Sir!”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Medley, withdrawing
from the presence.
Ukridge! Oh, hang it! I
had not met him for years, and, glad as I am, as a
general thing, to see the friends of my youth when
they drop in for a chat, I doubted whether I was quite
equal to Ukridge at the moment. A stout fellow
in both the physical and moral sense of the words,
he was a trifle too jumpy for a man of my cloistered
and intellectual life, especially as just now I was
trying to plan out a new novel, a tricky job demanding
complete quiet and seclusion. It had always been
my experience that, when Ukridge was around, things
began to happen swiftly and violently, rendering meditation
impossible. Ukridge was the sort of man who asks
you out to dinner, borrows the money from you to pay
the bill, and winds up the evening by embroiling you
in a fight with a cabman. I have gone to Covent
Garden balls with Ukridge, and found myself legging
it down Henrietta Street in the grey dawn, pursued
by infuriated costermongers.
I wondered how he had got my address,
and on that problem light was immediately cast by
Mrs. Medley, who returned, bearing an envelope.
“It came by the morning post,
sir, but it was left at Number Twenty by mistake.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Medley.
I recognised the handwriting.
The letter, which bore a Devonshire postmark, was
from an artist friend of mine, one Lickford, who was
at present on a sketching tour in the west. I
had seen him off at Waterloo a week before, and I
remember that I had walked away from the station wishing
that I could summon up the energy to pack and get off
to the country somewhere. I hate London in July.
The letter was a long one, but it
was the postscript which interested me most.
“... By the way, at Yeovil
I ran into an old friend of ours, Stanley Featherstonehaugh
Ukridge, of all people. As large as life quite
six foot two, and tremendously filled out. I
thought he was abroad. The last I heard of him
was that he had started for Buenos Ayres in a cattle
ship, with a borrowed pipe by way of luggage.
It seems he has been in England for some time.
I met him in the refreshment-room at Yeovil Station.
I was waiting for a down train; he had changed on his
way to town. As I opened the door, I heard a huge
voice entreating the lady behind the bar to ‘put
it in a pewter’; and there was S. F. U. in a
villainous old suit of grey flannels (I’ll swear
it was the one he had on last time I saw him) with
pince-nez tacked on to his ears with ginger-beer
wire as usual, and a couple of inches of bare neck
showing between the bottom of his collar and the top
of his coat you remember how he could never
get a stud to do its work. He also wore a mackintosh,
though it was a blazing day.
“He greeted me with effusive
shouts. Wouldn’t hear of my standing the
racket. Insisted on being host. When we had
finished, he fumbled in his pockets, looked pained
and surprised, and drew me aside. ’Look
here, Licky, old horse,’ he said, ’you
know I never borrow money. It’s against
my principles. But I must have a couple
of bob. Can you, my dear good fellow, oblige
me with a couple of bob till next Tuesday? I’ll
tell you what I’ll do. (In a voice full of emotion).
I’ll let you have this (producing a beastly
little threepenny bit with a hole in it which he had
probably picked up in the street) until I can pay you
back. This is of more value to me than I can well
express, Licky, my boy. A very, very dear friend
gave it to me when we parted, years ago... It’s
a wrench... Still, no, no... You
must take it, you must take it. Licky, old man,
shake hands, old horse. Shake hands, my boy.’
He then tottered to the bar, deeply moved, and paid
up out of the five shillings which he had made it
as an after-thought. He asked after you, and
said you were one of the noblest men on earth.
I gave him your address, not being able to get out
of it, but if I were you I should fly while there
is yet time.”
It seemed to me that the advice was
good and should be followed. I needed a change
of air. London may have suited Doctor Johnson,
but in the summer time it is not for the ordinary
man. What I wanted, to enable me to give the
public of my best (as the reviewer of a weekly paper,
dealing with my last work, had expressed a polite hope
that I would continue to do) was a little haven in
the country somewhere.
I rang the bell.
“Sir?” said Mrs. Medley.
“I’m going away for a bit,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know where.
I’ll send you the address, so that you can forward
letters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, if Mr. Ukridge calls again...”
At this point a thunderous knocking
on the front door interrupted me. Something seemed
to tell me who was at the end of that knocker.
I heard Mrs. Medley’s footsteps pass along the
hall. There was the click of the latch.
A volume of sound rushed up the stairs.
“Is Mr. Garnet in? Where
is he? Show me the old horse. Where is the
man of wrath? Exhibit the son of Belial.”
There followed a violent crashing on the stairs, shaking
the house.
“Garnet! Where are you, laddie? Garnet!!
Garnet!!!!!”
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge was in my midst.